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Vancouver in the ’70s was a city of change, from Greenpeace and the Canucks to protests, long hair and bell bottoms. More than 400 images of that decade from The Vancouver Sun’s archives are on display at a Museum of Vancouver exhibition to accompany a new book by former Sun librarian Kate Bird. Vancouver in the […]

Two Vancouver Sun reporters have been named finalists for the 2016 Jack Webster Awards. Reporters Kim Bolan and Stephen Hume have each been selected as finalists in the category of excellence in legal journalism. Bolan is nominated for her stories on rising violence among inmates in B.C. jails, while Hume was chosen for his coverage of the B.C. government’s failure […]

Mayor’s greenest city interview was self serving Re: Answering ‘greenest city’ critics, July 16 What are the statistics on “driving less” in Vancouver? Every day there are more commuters, greater commuting distances and greater specific commuting times in Metro Vancouver. Considering only the City of Vancouver without the region is meaningless. With the increase in […]

Those who follow politics will understand the sudden fascination with reconciliation and First Nations economic well-being. However, rhetoric is one thing. Reality is another. The devil is usually in the details. Here’s a detail.

VICTORIA — A controversial contaminated soil dump near Vancouver Island’s Shawnigan Lake isn’t complying with operating permits and faces “significant delay” in meeting its water management requirements. The province demands a plan by the end of July to address compliance issues but says operations must be in full compliance by the end of October before winter rains arrive […]

There are 2.4 million stories in the Not-So-Naked City. Why do so many increasingly seem to involve people feeling menaced by man’s best friend? The latest disturbing chapter in this sorry narrative of canine chaos comes from Jocelyn Grisdale. She took advantage of a lovely morning last week to take her two-year-old Bengal cat Mowgli […]

B.C.’s environment ministry failed its public duty to fully disclose test results regarding suspected contamination of community drinking water from liquid manure used as farm fertilizer above an aquifer in the North Okanagan, Information and Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham ruled Wednesday.

It’s not even officially summer, yet officially we’re already in another drought crisis on British Columbia’s premier heritage river, the Cowichan — and it could all have been so easily avoided for a relatively small public investment. There may be flooding in the north but the province is already asking householders, agricultural, industrial, commercial and […]

Provincial ministries of agriculture, environment and health have launched a joint task force to study the afflictions of those unhappy folks who get their drinking water from the increasingly contaminated Hullcar aquifer in the Okanagan.

It took more hammering than a barn raising but Vancouver Fairview MLA George Heyman finally pounded through Environment Minister Mary Polak’s talking points Monday to nail the key public policy issue festering in that controversy over drinking water quality at Spallumcheen. Vancouver Sun readers might reasonably wonder why a small aquifer in the Okanagan deserves attention here in Metro. It’s because, like the iceberg that sank the Titanic, the policy issue beneath the surface is much bigger than the immediate plight of a few rural householders.

I am a born Vancouverite and raised in Burnaby. I have lived here for 40 years. I fell in love with a wonderful Ontario man and had two wonderful boys. We bought our first home (a duplex with my brother) in Coquitlam in 2007 and sold the duplex in October in 2014.

Those we elect to lead us profess to be mystified by the ingratitude of people with disabilities who fail to appreciate government’s largesse in ending a five-year freeze in benefits and boosting them to $906 a month. When people showed up at the legislature in wheelchairs to protest the clawback of $52 of the province’s generous $77-a-month increase (it simultaneously cancelled a $45 transit pass) cabinet ministers seemed taken aback.

When the Union of B.C. Municipalities studied the economic impact of provincial ferries policy on coastal communities, Transport Minister Todd Stone scoffed. The study, prompted by Strathcona Regional District director Jim Abram of Quadra Island and other municipal politicians, reported that slashing service on heavily promoted tourist routes while jacking up ferry fares faster than inflation caused an 11 per cent decline in passenger travel when ridership should have risen by 19 per cent.

A third of the customers of an Okanagan Valley water district whose aquifer is contaminated by nitrates have been told by the province it’s unsafe to drink their water despite Health Minister Terry Lake’s assurance last week that contamination poses no real public health risk. Lake was responding in the legislature to questions about a Spallumcheen aquifer upon which the province repeatedly approved spraying millions of litres of liquid cow manure despite its own concerns about contamination. Cow manure has been associated with both nitrate pollution and E. coli, the bacterial pathogen responsible for the Walkerton, Ont., disaster in which 2,700 people fell ill and seven died.

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